Tallie's Knight (37 page)

Tallie pushed herself
out of her chair and walked around the house towards the front. Harris had also
seen the visitors, for the front door was wide open and he stood there,
waiting.

“Do you know who it
can be?” she asked him.

“No, m’lady. I’ve
never seen that coach before. I hope Fairbrother knows what he’s doing. Would
you care to wait inside the house, m’lady?”

“No. I know it is not
the thing for me to wait here like this, but I’m curious,” answered Tallie. “I’m
sure it will be all right.”

The coach came
rapidly up the drive and halted. The driver, an unshaven ruffian in a frieze
coat and red muffler, climbed down.

Tallie frowned. He
reminded her of Gino, but he turned to let down the coach steps and she could
see his face no longer.

Tallie stood
watching. A frisson of tension passed through her and a hand crept to her
throat. A tall man stepped down from the shabby coach, a tall, weary-looking
man, with overlong dark hair and —she knew without seeing them— grey eyes.

“Magnus!” She hurried
down the steps and ran awkwardly towards him, then recalled herself and stopped
short, hesitating, suddenly afraid.

By the very manner of
his leaving he had made it abundantly clear he did not want her love. So how
was she to respond to his return? All she wanted was to be in his arms. But
what did he want?

He took several steps
towards her, then stopped and stared.

Tallie ran a hand
self-consciously over her stomach, but she did not take her eyes off Magnus.
His skin was uncharacteristically bronzed, but under that he looked exhausted.
He had not shaved in several days and his eyes had dark shadows beneath them.
His face was thinner, too, almost gaunt. A tattered greatcoat was draped around
his shoulders. He lifted a hand in an awkward, half-hearted greeting, and the
coat slipped from his shoulders. His arm was in some sort of sling, she realised.

“Magnus, you are
hurt,” she cried, and hurried across the gravel towards him, her misgivings
forgotten in her concern. But just as she was about to reach him he turned away
from her. She stopped, unbearably wounded.

He said something she
didn’t catch to a person inside the coach.

Tallie waited,
struggling for composure. He had brought a guest.

A small figure
scrambled out of the coach and stood behind Magnus, as if hiding. The coach
rumbled away, leaving the three of them standing on the gravel drive. Magnus
reached behind him to pull the small person out, but he or she resisted.

Magnus said
something. In Italian.

Italian? Tallie’s
heart was in her mouth.

A thin, sharp, not
very clean little face peered out at her, frowning, then ducked back behind
Magnus. Tallie could hardly breathe. The face peered out at her again,
examining her intently. Tallie didn’t move.

After a moment he
stepped out, a skinny little boy, dressed in clothes too big for him. A boy
with ragged, curly, light brown hair, streaked with sun. A boy with a
scattering of freckles over the bridge of his nose. A boy about seven years
old.

“My dear,” said
Magnus, “I have brought you your brother. Richard, this is your sister.”

“No Richard —Ricardo,”
the little boy muttered fiercely, but he did not take his wary brown eyes off
Tallie.

“Of course, Ricardo,”
said Tallie, smiling through her tears. She held out her arms. The boy looked
up at Magnus, who nodded. The child shrank back a little. Magnus gave him a
gentle push towards Tallie.

The little boy came
towards her slowly, suspiciously, glancing frequently back at Magnus, as if
fearing he would disappear. Magnus nodded encouragingly. The child allowed
himself to be embraced, standing rigid in her arms for a moment or two, like a
small, stiff block of wood. It seemed to Tallie she could feel almost every
bone in his body, even through the layers of ill-fitting clothing. Poor little lad.
As soon as she loosened her hold he wriggled out of it and scurried back
towards Magnus, gripping Magnus’s sleeve firmly in his grubby little hand. It
was plain her little brother trusted only one person. Magnus laid a gentle hand
on the child’s shoulder.

“He has had a hard
time of it, my dear,” he said softly. “You must not take it to heart.”

Tallie shook her
head, smiling, her heart too full to speak.

Tears streamed down
her cheeks, but they were tears of joy, not sorrow.

Magnus, his intense
gaze boring into her, stepped forward, took out a large handkerchief and
carefully dried her face, cupping her chin in a large warm hand. She stood
motionless, drinking in the beloved Magnus smell of him, the tender motion of
his hands on her skin, his warm, ragged breath on her face. She had yearned for
this so often during the last months she was almost afraid it was yet another
dream.

Shakily she lifted a
hand to his thin, lined cheek and traced the long groove that bisected it.
Whiskers rasped beneath her fingers. He was real. Magnus had come back to her.

“Oh, Magnus,” she
whispered tremulously, and lifted her face blindly up to his. With a hoarse
groan he drew her against him and lowered his mouth to hers.

He kissed her
hungrily, as if unable to get enough of her, his tongue moving ravenously,
possessively, slaking a desperate need, arousing desperate desires. He pressed
burning kisses on her mouth, her nose, her throat, her wet eyelids, her mouth
again, holding her hard against him, smoothing her body against his, remembering,
reclaiming.

She kissed him back
fervently, feverishly, with equal passion, burning away the lost months of
loneliness, the anger, the distress and the fear. She only knew he was here,
with her, and that the part of her that had wanted to die was vibrantly,
joyously alive. Her arms clasped him around the neck, pulling him closer, and
she pressed herself against him, hard. She ran one hand through his long thick
hair, glorying in the cool texture of it and the bony, beloved shape of his skull.
She slipped her other hand into the opening of his shirt, longing to feel his
skin against hers once more. There was a sharp thud.

“What was that?”
Magnus pulled back suddenly and looked at her, shocked.

Tallie smiled
mistily. She took his hand and laid it gently on her stomach.

“That was your son.”

He stared at her,
then jumped as he felt another little kick.

His eyes fixed on the
swell under his hand for a long moment, then his eyes met hers in a look of
dazed wonder. The baby kicked again, and again Magnus started.

“Does it happen
often?” he whispered.

Tallie nodded.

Magnus blinked.

“Does it hurt?”

She shook her head.

“Not at all.”

“Oh, Lord,” he
groaned, and drew her into his arms again and buried his face in her hair. They
stood there a long time in silence, feeling the baby kick occasionally.

After a few minutes
Tallie felt a movement at her elbow. She glanced down. A small grubby face
scowled up at her, then tentatively pushed closer to Magnus. Gently she reached
down to draw him in to their embrace. His body was stiff and resistant, like a
wild animal, and he gripped hold of Magnus’s shirt possessively. Gently she
touched his hair. She felt him flinch, but he didn’t move away.

She started to stroke
the tangled honey-coloured curls, so like her own, and he let her, still poised
like a wary creature, to flee or to fight. She continued stroking his hair,
lightly at first, then more confidently as she felt him start to relax. It was
the last thing she would have expected to do with her brother, tame him like a
little wildcat. Her heart bled at the thought of the life he must have led, the
life which made him so wary and mistrustful.

After a time she felt
him thrust himself between her and Magnus and she dropped her hand away in
disappointment. It would take time for her to earn his trust, she told herself.
He turned his head to glare at her again, then looked away. Slowly, without
looking at her, he reached down and took her hand, then placed it back on his
head.

Tallie felt a surge
of joy as she began stroking him again, and she felt him lean imperceptibly
into her caress. He was hungry for love, she realised.

He was not the only
one.

She looked up at her
husband and saw with amazement a sheen of tears in his sea-grey eyes as he
gazed at her.

“Shall we go inside?”
he said huskily. She nodded, her heart once again too full for words. She moved
to step away, but he pulled her back, his good arm holding her hard against his
side. A small bony body burrowed defiantly between them and Magnus smiled and
loosened his hold on her, making room for the little boy.

“I see I’m going to
have to learn to share you,” he murmured.

Tallie smiled
tremulously back. “He, too,” she said, and then, with not a sliver of the dying
evening light showing between their bodies, the little family moved slowly
towards the house.

“Gino and I took a
shorter version of the route we left by,” said Magnus, sipping a glass of
burgundy with pleasure. “Into
Holland
,
then
Westphalia
and so on, travelling
overland, mainly by night.”

Tallie listened in
silence, her eyes wide. Travelling across miles and miles of enemy territory in
the middle of a war, and by night. It sounded terribly dangerous, yet he spoke
of his journey as if it were nothing.

“Have some more roast
beef,” she urged him.

His eyes travelled to
Tallie’s brother, who was ploughing happily through a second plate heaped with
food. He smiled.

“I think young
Richard is proving himself the better trencherman here.”

The boy looked up
frowning, his mouth full.

“No Richard —Ricardo!”

Magnus shook his
head.

“He will soon
accustom himself to his English name.”

“Ricardo,” came a
mutter from the other side of the table.

Tallie intervened.

“And then where did
you go?”

“Back through
Venice
and thence to
Piedmonte. Carlotta sends her love, by the way.”

Tallie smiled and
nodded, but she was not going to be side-tracked.

“Wasn’t it terribly
dangerous to travel all that way?”

Magnus shrugged.

“Oh, we ran into a
French patrol here and there, but honestly, my dear, if you’d seen them —more
than half of Napoleon’s recruits are beardless boys, dragged off their farms.
And the officers are not gentlemen, as ours are. I was in no great danger.”

He was lying, thought
Tallie. She had heard Freddie discussing the war. There might be a lot of young
lads in Napoleon’s army, but there were also a lot of strong men. And if his
officers were not gently born, it seemed to her they would be even rougher with
an Englishman caught in the wrong place.

“It took some time,
but in the end I found him —and half a dozen other young orphans.” He darted an
odd look at her. “You’ll never believe who was keeping an eye on them, making
sure the children didn’t starve. That bandit fellow.”

“Maguire?” Tallie was
astounded. And intrigued.

Magnus nodded.

“Hard to believe, but
it’s true. In fact he brought me to the little chap… after he’d bound my wound
up.”

“Maguire bound your
wound?” Tallie squeaked. Then she frowned in dire suspicion.

“He didn’t cause it,
did he?”

Magnus shook his
head, smiling.

“No, it was a French
bullet. The bandit dragged me to safety.”

“Oh, I knew he was a
noble fellow!” Tallie clasped her hands in thankfulness.

“Odd you should say
that,” Magnus drawled. “He claims to be Irish nobility —well, they all say
that, of course. But still, he’s got a look about him. I sent him back to Ireland.”

Tallie sat up,
alarmed.

“But won’t they hang
him? He said—”

Magnus snorted.

“I’d like to see them
try! No, I’ve appointed him manager of my Irish properties —for his lifetime.”

Tallie’s jaw dropped.

“Fellow might be a
damned blackguard, but he’s got a good heart,” said Magnus gruffly.

“Those children would
have perished without him. And he did save my life.”

“Yes, of course, and
I think it’s a wonderful idea,” exclaimed Tallie warmly. “And what did you do
with the other children?”

Magnus regarded her oddly
a moment. Naturally his wife would expect him to take care of any other orphans
he came across.

“They are in the very
best of care.”

“With whom? Maguire?”

Magnus grinned. It
had been a tempting thought, to saddle the green-eyed rogue with a pack of children,
but he hadn’t done it.

“No, I thought they
were better off in the care of a good woman.”

“What good woman?”

“Guess.”

Tallie thought for a
moment.

“Carlotta! Of course!
What a splendid idea, Magnus.”

He nodded.

“I left her with five
hungry little urchins, cooking up an enormous batch of pasta and mothering them
to her heart’s content. I settled money on her, of course, to help with the
cost, although she was damned stiff-necked about it.”

Tallie regarded her
husband in amazement. She could still hardly believe it; not only had her
husband not abandoned her, he had risked his life a hundred times over, so that
she could be united with her brother. Her bastard, half-foreign brother. And he’d
given a childless widow five needy children to care for. He’d even removed Maguire
from his life of crime and given him a position of respect in his homeland.

The very
contemplation of his noble deeds threatened to overwhelm her.

She watched the small
boy as he mopped up gravy with a piece of bread, then lifted the plate to lick
it clean. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Magnus frown and open his mouth.
She laid her hand on his arm.